Sparhafoc wrote:With no disrespect to your good self, Aron Ra was pretty clear that he was not interested in a formal debate. It's only Joshua who seems to want to dictate what can be said, or who can participate, and I see absolutely no reason to humour him.

While it may be convenient for Joshua to have only one interlocutor, the fact remains that a public forum is not a place to have a restricted private conversation. If Joshua were to use this as an excuse to auto-defenestrate, then I can only assume that other tenuous excuses would be just as forthcoming.

For me personally, I am not interested in talking to other people about Joshua's arguments, not least because they don't appear to have an iota of novelty to them. Instead, I'd rather attempt to engage him in reasoned discourse to see how well his positions hold up under sustained scrutiny. At present, they simply don't. Noting that rationality is not predicated on itself, but rather on how well its outcomes correspond to external empirical events seems to have rather ended the discussion anyway. It doesn't seem he had even conceived of such a simple fact.

Apologies in advance for lack of quote function. It's time to get up and I havent gone to bed yet. So it's low on my priority list to figure it out at the moment.

Aaron also said he wanted to give Joshua an uninterrupted chance to express himself so that they could exchange ideas to improve Joshua's understanding.

Aaron says:

" So why did I create a thread here? Because I'll do it the right way, but I won't do it HIS way. If the goal is to convince the other person, then it can't be a moderated debate, because a debate will never achieve my goal. This guy is absolutely wrong about absolutely everything, and that is glaringly obvious to everyone but him. So I'm going to give him the uninterruptible exchange that he wants in the hope of conducting an experiment, Is it possible to get HIM to realize where, why and how he's wrong? I think I can do that. Even if I can't, then at the very least, I can expose his dishonesty again as a matter of public record."

"I think I can do that" not "We" IMO it is difficult for that to happen unless Joshua just ignores everyone else. It's also been a fairly routine occurrence for Aaron to bring folks here for these types of discussions. If I'm not mistaken he doesn't generally do these one on one (or five on one if you like) interactions unless he can do them in a public space where they are recorded for others to observe and preserved for future reference. Which is why he invited him here rather than continuing an email exchange back and forth. The few people that do come have mostly been given their own thread so that they can stay focused and not be bludgeoned from ten different directions. With another thread for others to discuss and also for Joshua if he is inclined to interact with everyone. Some folks have engaged the group and others fold up before definitions finish with Aaron.

I personally hope he chooses to interact with as many people as he can. I find the discussion you, hack, and others bring to the table to be beneficial. Were I him though I wouldn't try to fend off a handful of people at one time if my purpose was to interact with someone specific that invited me for a discussion that was intended to be uninterrupted.

No matter now. They have multiple options available. Aaron can refuse the closed thread and/or Joshua can refuse this one. But that's for them to decide what it was they were agreeing to in the first place.

"Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their time." “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ~~Voltaire

Collecemall wrote:Aaron also said he wanted to give Joshua an uninterrupted chance to express himself so that they could exchange ideas to improve Joshua's understanding.

I read it very differently. Not that it greatly matters, but perhaps Aron Ra could clarify.

To me, it reads that Joshua accused Aron Ra of interrupting him when they were speaking together, as in butting in while Joshua was speaking. In a written format, it's not possible to butt in while someone's typing, ergo Joshua's messages would be uninterrupted by anything Aron Ra did.

Collecemall wrote:I personally hope he chooses to interact with as many people as he can. I find the discussion you, hack, and others bring to the table to be beneficial. Were I him though I wouldn't try to fend off a handful of people at one time if my purpose was to interact with someone specific that invited me for a discussion that was intended to be uninterrupted.

And that's fine, but there's a massive difference between responding only to Aron's posts and responding to others to dictate that they don't post. I have no issue with receiving no responses to my input, but I'm with Spearthrower on the attempts to stifle the contributions of others.

Collecemall wrote:Aaron also said he wanted to give Joshua an uninterrupted chance to express himself so that they could exchange ideas to improve Joshua's understanding.

I read it very differently. Not that it greatly matters, but perhaps Aron Ra could clarify.

To me, it reads that Joshua accused Aron Ra of interrupting him when they were speaking together, as in butting in while Joshua was speaking. In a written format, it's not possible to butt in while someone's typing, ergo Joshua's messages would be uninterrupted by anything Aron Ra did.

AronRa wrote:There was never any reason for a private forum, especially not now that Joshua has apparently already run off whupped.

I gotta be honest. I'm a little confused by your response me in what's supposed to be our actual discussion. You've actually quoted yourself and then went on to offer refutations following the quotes.... of yourself...

With that said, I'd like to recap on the points that actually matter.

1. You admittedly employ your reasoning as the means by which you justify the validity of your reasoning. You assert that your reasoning can be checked and valididated by other people for example, but as I've pointed out earlier; you have no choice but to employ your reasoning to evaluate other people's validation of your reasoning. You are therefore still in the circle.

2. You take a strong position against the definition of faith which you think is the biblical definition. However, since the basis for the presumed validity of your reasoning is logically fallacious, your very employment of it in any and all circumstances is fideistic. The best definition of faith that I can offer you in accordance to the Christian worldview is trust in the God whom we are certain exists. According to Romans 1:18-21, everyone KNOWS God exists. How do you define faith in someone who you already know? Read the gospels, and you'll hopefully come to an understanding of the differing usages of the word faith and which one applies where. You faith you place in your reasoning is blind.

You see, I don't need to address all your objections. All I gotta do is show you where your reasoning falls apart, and because I've demonstrated this, you stand refuted. If the basis for your reasoning is logically fallacious, then all proceeding claims are questionable by default. If the root is bad, the fruit is bad.

My position is that you're capable of valid reasoning, but it's in spite of your worldview. You're imago dei, and you must borrow from Christian presuppositions in order to function in God's world.

As Douglas Wilson said

"If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions… … Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else."

Think about it. On your evolutionary position, your thoughts are chemically determined happenstance. You're not arguing your position for any rational reason, as doing so presupposes freedom in your thinking; but rather you are merely thinking and acting in accordance to whatever the chemical responses in your brain have determined at any given point in time. So if you're position were true, you couldn't know it.

Genuine knowledge is contingent upon universal concepts which can't be verified by empirical methodology. The laws of logic, as stated previously, are universally true, immaterial, and immutable. They do require a mind to exist, but human minds are not universal. Humans minds also differ from one person to another, and if the laws of logic are only products of how we think, then we could never violate the a law of logic. If the laws of logic are descriptive, then the laws of logic are contingent and there'd be no basis to presume that they will be the same in all places at all times.

Read this quote from CS Lewis.

“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents. It is like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."

AronRa wrote:There was never any reason for a private forum, especially not now that Joshua has apparently already run off whupped.

I gotta be honest. I'm a little confused by your response me in what's supposed to be our actual discussion. You've actually quoted yourself and then went on to offer refutations following the quotes.... of yourself...

With that said, I'd like to recap on the points that actually matter.

1. You admittedly employ your reasoning as the means by which you justify the validity of your reasoning. You assert that your reasoning can be checked and valididated by other people for example, but as I've pointed out earlier; you have no choice but to employ your reasoning to evaluate other people's validation of your reasoning. You are therefore still in the circle.

2. You take a strong position against the definition of faith which you think is the biblical definition. However, since the basis for the presumed validity of your reasoning is logically fallacious, your very employment of it in any and all circumstances is fideistic. The best definition of faith that I can offer you in accordance to the Christian worldview is trust in the God whom we are certain exists. According to Romans 1:18-21, everyone KNOWS God exists. How do you define faith in someone who you already know? Read the gospels, and you'll hopefully come to an understanding of the differing usages of the word faith and which one applies where. You faith you place in your reasoning is blind.

You see, I don't need to address all your objections. All I gotta do is show you where your reasoning falls apart, and because I've demonstrated this, you stand refuted. If the basis for your reasoning is logically fallacious, then all proceeding claims are questionable by default. If the root is bad, the fruit is bad.

My position is that you're capable of valid reasoning, but it's in spite of your worldview. You're imago dei, and you must borrow from Christian presuppositions in order to function in God's world.

As Douglas Wilson said

"If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions… … Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else."

Think about it. On your evolutionary position, your thoughts are chemically determined happenstance. You're not arguing your position for any rational reason, as doing so presupposes freedom in your thinking; but rather you are merely thinking and acting in accordance to whatever the chemical responses in your brain have determined at any given point in time. So if you're position were true, you couldn't know it.

Genuine knowledge is contingent upon universal concepts which can't be verified by empirical methodology. The laws of logic, as stated previously, are universally true, immaterial, and immutable. They do require a mind to exist, but human minds are not universal. Humans minds also differ from one person to another, and if the laws of logic are only products of how we think, then we could never violate the a law of logic. If the laws of logic are descriptive, then the laws of logic are contingent and there'd be no basis to presume that they will be the same in all places at all times.

Read this quote from CS Lewis.

“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents. It is like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."

AronRa wrote:There was never any reason for a private forum, especially not now that Joshua has apparently already run off whupped.

I gotta be honest. I'm a little confused by your response me in what's supposed to be our actual discussion. You've actually quoted yourself and then went on to offer refutations following the quotes.... of yourself...

No I didn't. But you're welcome to quote what you think I said. Because I have no idea what you think you're talking about.

With that said, I'd like to recap on the points that actually matter.

1. You admittedly employ your reasoning as the means by which you justify the validity of your reasoning. You assert that your reasoning can be checked and valididated by other people for example, but as I've pointed out earlier; you have no choice but to employ your reasoning to evaluate other people's validation of your reasoning. You are therefore still in the circle.

And as I said, since we both exist in reality, then since I can turn to objective verification, that gives me the edge over you: because you also use your reasoning to justify your reasoning, except that you imagine an arbitrary outside source that can't possibly exist, and doesn't offer the excuse that you want, and you simply reject all the obvious proof that you're wrong.

2. You take a strong position against the definition of faith which you think is the biblical definition. However, since the basis for the presumed validity of your reasoning is logically fallacious, your very employment of it in any and all circumstances is fideistic.

My definition of faith is accurate, and my reasoning is justified where yours is not.

The best definition of faith that I can offer you in accordance to the Christian worldview is trust in the God whom we are certain exists.

Wrong. Once again, I refer you to my book.

According to a consensus of every authoritative or definitive source available anywhere—including dictionaries, scriptures, hymns, sermons of theologians, past and present—faith in the context of religion can be accurately defined as a stoic, unwavering conviction—a positive belief which is not dependant on evidence, and will not change because of evidence. Believers usually want to argue this point trying to conceal the fact. So to prove it here, I’ll cite several dictionaries just to establish consensus:

Faith:“Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing, that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.” —Dictionary.com

“1. Complete trust or confidence. 2. Strong belief in a religion. 3. A system of religious belief.” —AskOxford

“Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony.” —Accurate and Reliable Dictionary

“A firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” —Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

“For quite a lot of people, faith or the lack thereof, is an important part of their identities. E.G. a person will identify him or herself as a Muslim or a skeptic. Many religious rationalists, as well as nonreligious people, criticize implicit faith as being irrational. In this view, belief should be restricted to what is directly supportable by logic or evidence.” —Wikipedia

Dictionaries give common usage regardless of whether it is appropriate or accurate. I wouldn’t trust a common dictionary for scientific terms, because then I can demonstrate where dictionaries are sometimes wrong. (None of them properly define the word “animal,” for example.) I wouldn’t limit myself to dictionaries for this purpose either, because everyone wants to contest me. Another reason is that there are two different contexts in the dictionary; one of them exists only in the dictionary and in common vernacular, but it does not relate to religion, and does not derive from any of the writings of religion. I’m only talking about faith in the religious context.

Defenders of the faith want to pretend that “faith” is a synonym of “trust,” as if the focus could be shown to be worthy of that trust. Or they deliberately use the wrong context, pretending that we must have “faith” that an airplane will land safely before we get on it. That is quite a bit different than the religious context. They won’t admit what faith really is until they try to project their own faults onto nonbelievers in their frequent attempts at false equivalence—at which point they’ll either say that I believe on faith in lieu of evidence just like they do (ignoring all the evidence I present) or they’ll say that they have evidence just like I do, though they can never show it.

If faith is defined as an unsupported conviction, then they have it and I don’t. If faith is defined as a secure confidence in the truth, value, or reliability of a given position, then I have it and they don’t, according to the behaviors I typically see when debating such people—like when they ignore all my questions and won’t acknowledge my answers either. But we are definitely talking about a religious context here, not my estimation of evident probabilities when boarding an airplane.

If I were arguing scientific terms, I would have to cite peer-reviewed studies. Since faith is a religious term, I’ll have to turn to religious authorities, beginning with the most familiar scriptures in Western society.

• John 20:29: “blessed are they who have not seen but yet believe.” • Romans 1:20: “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made.” • Romans 14:22: “The faith which you have, have as your own conviction” • 2 Corinthians 4:18: “We look not at things seen, but at things not seen.” • 2 Corinthians 5:7: “for we walk by faith, not by sight.” • Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Here we have things hoped for but not seen, looking at things that are not seen, not seeing what is seen, and, in Romans 1:20, the most common combination of logical fallacies: the circular argument routing back to an assumed conclusion. Note that we are expected to see what is not there. Not only that, but we are blessed if we make ourselves see what cannot be seen. This is not a reasonable request, and these are not reasoned responses. As Dan Barker writes in Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist:

"Faith is the acceptance of the truth of a statement in spite of insufficient evidence. . . . Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits."

Faith is the very opposite of reason, and where faith is encouraged, reason is discouraged. We are expected to believe without reason; in fact, we are blessed if we readily believe the most outrageous illogical, inconsistent, and contradictory claims from even the most credulous and questionable people without any evidence at all, according to the sermons of theologians past and present. Consider the words of Martin Luther, founder of Protestant Christianity, in the following excerpts from his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians:

"What makes matters worse is that one-half of ourselves, our own reason, stands against us. . . . To turn one’s eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law. . . . When the conscience is disturbed, do not seek advice from reason or from the Law, but rest your conscience in the grace of God and in His Word, and proceed as if you had never heard of the Law. . . . The person who can rightly divide Law and Gospel has reason to thank God. He is a true theologian. I must confess that in times of temptation I do not always know how to do it. To divide Law and Gospel means to place the Gospel in heaven, and to keep the Law on earth; to call the righteousness of the Gospel heavenly, and the righteousness of the Law earthly; to put as much difference between the righteousness of the Gospel and that of the Law, as there is difference between day and night. If it is a question of faith or conscience, ignore the Law entirely. . . . We have two propositions: To live unto the Law, is to die unto God. To die unto the Law, is to live unto God. These two propositions go against reason. . . . When we pay attention to reason, God seems to propose impossible matters in the Christian Creed. To reason it seems absurd that Christ should offer His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper; that Baptism should be the washing of regeneration; that the dead shall rise; that Christ the Son of God was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, etc. Reason shouts that all this is preposterous. Are you surprised that reason thinks little of faith? Reason thinks it ludicrous that faith should be the foremost service any person can render unto God. . . . Let your faith supplant reason. Abraham mastered reason by faith in the Word of God. Not as though reason ever yields meekly. It put up a fight against the faith of Abraham. Reason protested that it was absurd to think that Sarah, who was ninety years old and barren by nature, should give birth to a son. But faith won the victory and routed reason, that ugly beast and enemy of God. Everyone who by faith slays reason, the world’s biggest monster, renders God a real service, a better service than the religions of all races and all the drudgery of meritorious monks can render. Do not consult that Quackdoctor, Reason. Believe in Christ."

As you can see, where faith is encouraged reason is discouraged. They’re opposites. This is not just my interpretation, but the common understanding of scholars and philosophers. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Faith means not wanting to know what is true.” Or, to put it another way, as Mark Twain did, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Faith requires that we literally make-believe, that we presume, presuppose, and pretend; that we ignore what we really do see, and imagine something is there when it apparently isn’t. It means that we lie to ourselves and fool ourselves. Worse than that, faith requires that we believe the unbelievable. This is reflected in the hymns of Michael Card, especially the appropriately titled “That’s What Faith Must Be”:

To hear with my heart, .to see with my soul, to be guided by a hand I cannot see, that’s what faith must be.

So we follow God’s own Fool, for only the foolish can tell. Believe the unbelievable, and come be a fool as well.

This isn’t just willful ignorance; this is dementia, a deliberately induced delusion. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a delusion is a persistent false belief that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary, to falsely claim something even when there is evidence otherwise. What makes these beliefs delusional is that they don’t change when the person is presented with conflicting information—the beliefs remain fixed even when the facts contradict them.

According to Romans 1:18-21, everyone KNOWS God exists. How do you define faith in someone who you already know?

Again that is only an empty assertion. If you can't show it, you don't know it. You're only pretending that you do. And again I must refer you to my book.

But the most offensive tactic in this category is the assertion that atheists secretly believe in God. Worse than that, according to presupps like Sye Ten Bruggencate, atheists don’t just believe God exists; we know he does. Why does he say that? Because of the following passage from the first chapter of the book of Romans:

"(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness; (19) because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. (20) For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, [even] his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: (21) because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. (22) Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, (23) and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. (24) Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves: (25) for that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

After this, the passage goes on to imply (in the modern interpretation) that all atheists are hateful, evil, twisted, perverted, arrogant, and full of gay pride. It also says we worship the creation rather than the creator. I take that to mean that we actually study the natural world with awe and wonder, and that we accept evidence while apologists deny it to believe something else on faith.

Remember also that everywhere except the Bible, a fool is defined as one who too readily accepts improbable claims of credulous sources on insufficient evidence and is thus easily duped by a lie. Of course the Bible gives the opposite definition. So whenever someone says to me, “the fool says in his heart there is no god,” I like to reply with Jeremiah 8:8: “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us’? Behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.”

Somehow apologists interpret the above citation of Romans 1 from verse 18 onward to mean that everyone really knows that God exists, whether we admit it or not. First off, even if we pretend that the Bible is the authority they imagine it to be, these comments still didn’t apply to everyone in the world; they were directed only to a particular subset of Jews and Gentiles who were quarreling over who knew God better. Secondly, the passage actually requires that the reader simply assume the conclusion that “creation” requires a creator, but that’s the fallacy of question begging. What if we call it “reality” instead? Otherwise the passage gives no explanation of how anyone (much less everyone) is supposed to “know” that God exists.

There are also many other verses which prove that this cannot be the correct interpretation, beginning with the 16th verse of this very chapter from Romans where it says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation “to everyone who believes,” which implies that there are also those who do not believe. 2 Thessalonians 1:8 says the same thing. 1 Thessalonians 4:5 says the Gentiles don’t know God. According to 1 Samuel 3:7, Samuel didn’t know God, and Exodus 5:2 says Pharaoh didn’t either. Jeremiah 9:3 has God himself complaining about people who don’t know him. 1 Corinthians 8:6–7 also states unambiguously that there are people who do not know that there is a creator god, much less who he is. So the Bible clearly admits in several places that there are people who do not believe in the god of Abraham, either because they believe in other gods instead or because they believe in no gods at all.

This is interesting. Not because Sye Ten Bruggencate is wrong again, but because he gets his knowledge from scripture; because he says he knows God, and that God knows everything. Sye says everyone believes in God, but the Word of God says otherwise. So who is right this time—Sye or God? It seems that Sye Ten Bruggencate could be wrong about virtually everything he thinks he knows for the very reason that he thinks he knows things. He’s certainly wrong about the things he boasts about knowing most proudly.

Read the gospels, and you'll hopefully come to an understanding of the differing usages of the word faith and which one applies where. You faith you place in your reasoning is blind.

Once again, I obviously don't place any faith in my reasoning. You're still using equivocation to substitute your lack of any valid arguement.

You see, I don't need to address all your objections. All I gotta do is show you where your reasoning falls apart, and because I've demonstrated this, you stand refuted. If the basis for your reasoning is logically fallacious, then all proceeding claims are questionable by default. If the root is bad, the fruit is bad.

Then you're just bad fruit, because you haven't addressed ANY of my objections. Nor have you demonstrated anything but your own inability to comprehend even your own arguments much less mine. You haven't answered any of my questions either. Basically you've failed every point every way.

My position is that you're capable of valid reasoning,

That's my position about you. But I'm able to demonstrate that where you have only ever always failed.

but it's in spite of your worldview. You're imago dei, and you must borrow from Christian presuppositions in order to function in God's world.

I do not borrow anything from Christian delusions; neither your imagined presuppostions nor any aspect of your worldview either, as none of that works in reality.

As Douglas Wilson said

"If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions… … Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else."

Again you demonstrate that emotional bias that if your god doesn't exist then human life loses all value such that we "no more than just meat machines" a you put it. I correct this error in your perspective in our live discussion, yet you're still repeating it.

Think about this. Even if your fantasy friend were real, would we not still be biological organisms? Wouldn't we still be "meat machings" even if there was a god??

Think about it. On your evolutionary position, your thoughts are chemically determined happenstance. You're not arguing your position for any rational reason, as doing so presupposes freedom in your thinking; but rather you are merely thinking and acting in accordance to whatever the chemical responses in your brain have determined at any given point in time. So if you're position were true, you couldn't know it.

Wrong on all points. First of all, I do not presuppose freedom in my thinking. Free will does not exist, and cannot exist in the Christian worldview, though you haven't given that enough thought yet to realize that.

Secondly, that doesn't even effect that my thinking is still rational where yours is not. Remember that rational though is based on or in accordance to logic. That's what I'm doing, and even computers can do, yet you are not. I can also demonstrate where and why I'm right where you cannot.

Finally, you still need help distinguishing when to use your vs you're.

Genuine knowledge is contingent upon universal concepts which can't be verified by empirical methodology.

You are so full of shit! I already gave you an example to refute you. The fact that we are animals, apes, and even monkeys can be verified, confirmed, proven with empirical methodology. That's not true of anything you make-believe because you believe in lies.

The laws of logic, as stated previously, are universally true, immaterial, and immutable. They do require a mind to exist, but human minds are not universal. Humans minds also differ from one person to another, and if the laws of logic are only products of how we think, then we could never violate the a law of logic. If the laws of logic are descriptive, then the laws of logic are contingent and there'd be no basis to presume that they will be the same in all places at all times.

Once again, I repeat, the "laws of logic" are merely observations, things humans have determined to be true so far as we can tell, and are subject to correction by better philosophers--as has happened before.

Read this quote from CS Lewis.

“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true?;

Because we can verify these things experimentally and empirically.

I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents. It is like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."

Your compilation of conceptual fallacies do not constitute any sort of argument.

Now to go over what REALLY matters, (and not the horseshit you just cited) I'm going to repeat the questions you ducked and dodged.

1. Since you accept that either Sye ten Bruggencate or Sir Isaac Newton logically must be wrong, then how could we tell which one it is?

2. Do you also accept either the evident probability or obvious possibility that BOTH men could be wrong?

3. Do you understand why asserting empty unsupported and indefensible speculation as though it were factual is tantamount to lying?

4. Do you understand that it is dishonest to cite facts that are not facts?

5. Do you understand why it is dishonest to claim "truths" that are either not evidently true or are evidently not true?

6. Do you understand why it is dishonest to say you know things you don't know? And that the only time you can claim to know something is when you can demonstrate your accuracy and SHOW that you know what you say you do? If you think something is true, but you can't show concusive evidence to indicate that, you can say you believe it, but you can't say you know it, because you don't, and that would be lying.

7. Do you understand why you're not supposed to lie?

8. Do you accept that the natural universe really exists and is not simply an illusion?

9. Do you understand why it is impossible for our senses to be feeding us false information, meaning information about a false reality?

I'll remind you of the refutations you deliberately and dishonestly ignored for all your other points when they become relevant.

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." - Friedrich Nietzsche. "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - Mark Twain

joshua040103 wrote:With that said, I'd like to recap on the points that actually matter.

Quick point of order, Joshua - but I think you may have confused yourself.

If you look back at the posts you've made, you'll notice that you didn't use the quote formatting the forum software permits, and consequently your posts are very unclear about who is saying what to whom.

Thus, if someone were to quote one of your posts, they'd either have to spend several dozen minutes adding the formatting, or they could just quote your hodgepodge and reply to it.

So perhaps what you are reading is Aron Ra quoting your post in which you had made very confused.

Completely unintelligible to anyone but you without going back and seeing who said what.

joshua040103 wrote:1. You admittedly employ your reasoning as the means by which you justify the validity of your reasoning.

That's factually untrue.

joshua040103 wrote: You assert that your reasoning can be checked and valididated by other people for example, but as I've pointed out earlier; you have no choice but to employ your reasoning to evaluate other people's validation of your reasoning. You are therefore still in the circle.

It's an illusory circle you've manufactured and which doesn't stand up to any degree of critical scrutiny.

joshua040103 wrote:2. You take a strong position against the definition of faith which you think is the biblical definition. However, since the basis for the presumed validity of your reasoning is logically fallacious, your very employment of it in any and all circumstances is fideistic. The best definition of faith that I can offer you in accordance to the Christian worldview is trust in the God whom we are certain exists.

Your certainty is wholly misplaced. You actually know nothing of the sort, you just believe it, but beliefs do not equate to knowledge. By definition, beliefs are things we don't know to be true.

joshua040103 wrote: How do you define faith in someone who you already know?

You don't already know your god, you just believe you do due to brainwashing. Unlike every other person you know in this world, you cannot offer any evidence of 'his' existence, I cannot meet 'him' and shake 'his' hand, I can't pick up a telephone and call 'him', I can't contact 'him' in any way shape or form as I could any other person you could rightfully claim to know.

The only alleged way to make such a contact is to... yep, have faith. The precondition is faith. First believe, then you get confirmation of your belief. It's brainwashing.

joshua040103 wrote: Read the gospels, and you'll hopefully come to an understanding of the differing usages of the word faith and which one applies where. You faith you place in your reasoning is blind.

No one is obliged to submit to the Bible's definition of the word faith because the Bible is not a credible source.

joshua040103 wrote: All I gotta do is show you where your reasoning falls apart,....

No, actually, that's false because even if someone's reasoning was wrong, they could still alight on some aspects of truth, even by chance.

joshua040103 wrote: and because I've demonstrated this, you stand refuted.

You believe you've refuted it - in fact, you've just asserted repeatedly a contention that hangs on nothing but nonsense. Your contention is a non-sequitur.

joshua040103 wrote: If the basis for your reasoning is logically fallacious, then all proceeding claims are questionable by default. If the root is bad, the fruit is bad.

This is exactly the position you are in because you claim to 'know' that Yahweh exists, when the fact is that you don't 'know' - you just believe it very strongly.

This is factually not the position the rationalist is in because, as has been explained to you, there are external arbiters of the reasoning employed by rationalists, and reality is not predicated on their reasoning, but rather acts as a check as to how well their reasoning corresponds to reality, how accurate it is. You and yours, on the other hand, ignore reality when it's inconvenient to your beliefs.

The reason you need this argument is because religious claims are manifestly contrary to evidence. That's why some numpty made up this argument, and obviously it fools no-one who can think, only those who need to believe their faith is rational.

joshua040103 wrote:My position is that you're capable of valid reasoning, but it's in spite of your worldview. You're imago dei, and you must borrow from Christian presuppositions in order to function in God's world.

That's not your position, it's just plagiarism. If you are Christian, isn't theft considered bad?

joshua040103 wrote:As Douglas Wilson said

"If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter.

Try inserting 'Siva' or 'Vishnu' or 'Mbombo of Bakuba' there in place of the word 'God' and see if you then accept the contention.

You don't, which exposes it as a circular claim.

joshua040103 wrote: If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper.

It's not true.

joshua040103 wrote:You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions…

Reasoning is not a series of chemical reactions, it's an evolved survival trait like seeing, walking, shitting, and all the other mechanistic elements that life has developed over millions of years of selective survival.

Absurd. Morality occurs in all social organisms, tragedy befalls us from without (according to this argument, you must contend that God creates tragedy, which of course you wouldn't which again exposes how little thought goes into these claims), and sorrow is the feeling of losing someone important to your life. None of these are just chemical reactions any more than they are just atoms - it's a compositional fallacy, and it's no different than saying that planes can't fly because the pieces of metal a plane is made from cannot fly.

joshua040103 wrote: They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before.

Yes, silly argument.

joshua040103 wrote: If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else."

Even if this gross simplification were true, the answer would still be - if that's the truth, then that's the truth. Better to face reality as we can discern it rather than making up magical men living in the sky to lull us into unwarranted comfort.

joshua040103 wrote:You're not arguing your position for any rational reason, as doing so presupposes freedom in your thinking; but rather you are merely thinking and acting in accordance to whatever the chemical responses in your brain have determined at any given point in time. So if you're position were true, you couldn't know it.

Your claim is actually about determinism, but evolution isn't deterministic, ergo you should probably learn what you are talking about before puclicizing such idiocy in the name of your religious convictions.

joshua040103 wrote:Genuine knowledge is contingent upon universal concepts which can't be verified by empirical methodology.

Manifestly false, and indicative that you don't understand the notion of a law, which is descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Perhaps you could spend a little more time reading and understanding peoples' responses to you before repeating errors.

joshua040103 wrote:They do require a mind to exist, but human minds are not universal. Humans minds also differ from one person to another, and if the laws of logic are only products of how we think, then we could never violate the a law of logic. If the laws of logic are descriptive, then the laws of logic are contingent and there'd be no basis to presume that they will be the same in all places at all times.

There's no basis to presume that the laws of logic will be the same in all places and at all times, and this is true even if there is a god.

joshua040103 wrote:Read this quote from CS Lewis.

The writer of fiction - fitting. Is it about a talking lion?

joshua040103 wrote:“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too.

The notion of 'accident' here is so far removed from serious thought, it suggests that Lewis should have stuck to talking horses.

Accidents presuppose there's a desired, intended, or correct outcome from which to deviate in an unexpected fashion. Ergo, the notion of an accident actually supposes the belief that a god had a purpose, that the universe was predestined.

As this is factually contradictory to the position we hold, you need to stop talking Joshua, and start listening to your interlocutor who clearly knows their position a damn sight better than you do.

joshua040103 wrote: If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents....

Even if the former contentions were true, which they're not, then this doesn't follow. It's faulty reasoning, which is amusing.

If I were to accidentally fall over with a pen in my hand, the nib were to accidentally hit the page on which was an incredibly complex math problem, and the stroke of the pen accidentally solve an equation, the answer to that equation doesn't thereby become an accident just because of the way in which it was solved.

Really Joshua, you need to employ your own thinking here instead of having fantasy authors do it for you.

joshua040103 wrote:—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms.

Determinism is the religionists' belief, not the areligionist's.

joshua040103 wrote: And this holds for the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s.

Quite, quite wrong.

joshua040103 wrote: But if their thoughts—i.e. of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true?

Such old tired apologetics. And Plantinga did it better.

Because, Joshua, as you've already been told half a dozen times, those thoughts can be validated or invalidated against external outcomes.

Believe all you want that you can fly, but jumping out of a window is going to arbitrate how well your thoughts correspond to reality.

So do you ever aim to engage in this absolute destruction of your repeated claims? Or are you just going to keep saying 'nyha aa' and then repeating them?

joshua040103 wrote:I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents.

I don't believe arguments from incredulity exist; therefore they don't.

joshua040103 wrote: It is like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."

Yes, that's the exact flaw in Lewis' reasoning, and amusingly, it's the Argument from Design made by Christian apologists like C. S. Lewis!

If you say yes, then you are engaging in solipsism, and are simultaneously contradicting your claim that God created the world, because it would be our thoughts which create the world.

If you say no, then you've debunked your own argument.

Outcomes in the external world are not predicated upon reasoning in the internal world - we do not create the outcomes with our thoughts - therefore reasoning can be corroborated or invalidated by ensuing empirical evidence.

Either way, you've dug a very large hole for yourself. Perhaps philosophy's not for you which is why you do religion instead?

AronRa wrote:Prior to this discussion, I told him that presuppositional apologetics was "a branch of religious belief wherein the believer asserts that he is right simply because he believes he is right." He accused me of committing a straw-man fallacy, but he demonstrated in our discussion that I got it right, didn't he?

Most people from this forum presuppose a naturalistic explanation for everything, how is that different from what presuppositional apologetics do?

AronRa wrote:So to open this up, I'll repeat what I told him in an earlier text message: [color=#00FF00]"I define Rationalism as "A secular perspective that belief should be restricted only to that which is directly- supportable by logic or evidence, that while many things may be considered possible, nothing should be believed to be true unless positively and empirically indicated." So you explain to me how you think being rational is irrational.

in fact what you call rationalism (also called verificationism) has been falsified and largely abandoned by scholars, only fanatic atheist from youtube and forums hold on to that view.

The 1951 article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", by Willard Van Orman Quine, attacked the analytic/synthetic division and apparently rendered the verificationist program untenable. Carl Hempel, one of verificationism's greatest internal critics, had recently concluded the same as to the verifiability criterion.[2] In 1958, Norwood Hanson explained that even direct observations must be collected, sorted, and reported with guidance and constraint by theory, which sets a horizon of expectation and interpretation, how observational reports, never neutral, are laden with theory.[15]The principle was also recognized as being self-refuting: it cannot itself be empirically verified, and it is not a logical tautology, so must be meaningless under its own termshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationism#Decline

.

AronRa wrote:in that you simply refuse to admit when you're wrong despite any amount of evident or logical proof.

well you have an opportunity to show that you are better than joshua040103 and admit that you where wrong, now that I showed how rationalism fails.

And this is where I usually end the conversation with a presupper. If you claim I'm lying without any proof whatsoever (and no, Bible isn't proof, it's not even evidence, it is the claim), as every presupper seems to be compelled to do by their script, you've lost my interest in conversing with you.

If naturalism is true, meaning that all causation between events is naturalistic; then on what basis do you presume that you have the capacity to freely choose the better between two propositions?

I haven't read the whole thread, but I bet you haven't received any direct answer to that question.

Arora openly admits that he doesn't believe in free will, so under his view you where determined to be a theist and he was determined to be an atheist, under his view, there is no objective way of telling which is true.

definition of free will

the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.

in fact what you call rationalism (also called verificationism) has been falsified and largely abandoned by scholars, only fanatic atheist from youtube and forums hold on to that view.

Oh look! LEROY's back, and what's the very first thing he does?

A is actually B, B is unpopular, only ad hominem believe in well poisoned B

In reality, of course, verificationism has precisely fuck all to do with anything, being 100 years out of date, and not a single person in this forum has ever espoused the contention that only empirically verifiable statements are cognitively meaningful.

But LEROY's doing only what LEROY knows how to do. Wonder how that repeated lying would go down with the Christian god were it to exist?

leroy wrote:well you have an opportunity to show that you are better than joshua040103 and admit that you where wrong, now that I showed how rationalism fails.

Well, an opportunity that Leroy fails to use time and time again...

1. You've been repeatedly explained that we do not presuppose a naturalistic explanation for everything. Perhaps for a couple of hundreds of times? You're just lying at this point.

2. What Aron Ra calls rationalism and what you call verificationism are not the same thing. Just as we can remember with most other words such as when Leroy used "transcendent" to describe something that isn't transcendent. Being new, joshua040103 is the only person here that may not know that you have a history getting terms wrong.

So again, if you're going to come back and insert yourself into a topic, why not try being wrong with something completely new rather than repeat something where you've been shown to be wrong a couple of hundreds of time before?

Or if you insist on being wrong, do it somewhere else. Open yet another thread where you will eventually leave.

"Slavery is morally ok" - "I don't know how the burden of proof works in the mind of atheists but I don't have to prove my claims" - Public information messages from the League of Reason's christians